Project: The AeroFocus

[sheepdog 44]

Use the thin clear plastic sheeting you get from a poster board frame. You can cut and tape it you get an airfoil shape. Then cut off the extra that gets in the cameras field of vision.

I've contemplated doing that to my own rear view mirrors.

[HydroJim]

Made my mom stand in the garage to check out the "night vision" on the camera. works pretty well.


I started the side skirts today so hopefully they work out well




Do you guys think it would be worth it for me to make front wheel skirts that only cover half the wheel well. I can't justify covering the whole wheel well because with rollers on the inside, there is no way the drag reduction could overcome the added frontal area.

[AndrzejM]

Is it me and my imagination or you have straight vision on the screen and not reversed horizontally as in regular mirror? It can be tricky to drive like that ;-)

[NeilBlanchard]

If the is the right side video mirror, than the image does look like it is "backwards from what you would see in an optical mirror.

[HydroJim]

I think I was playing around with the settings when I took this picture, but it's correct now. There is a button the the monitor that lets you flip the picture in all different directions

[AndrzejM]

That's good And nice project BTW...

[tru]

Originally Posted by HydroJim

Made my mom stand in the garage to check out the "night vision" on the camera. works pretty well.


I started the side skirts today so hopefully they work out well




Do you guys think it would be worth it for me to make front wheel skirts that only cover half the wheel well. I can't justify covering the whole wheel well because with rollers on the inside, there is no way the drag reduction could overcome the added frontal area.

please provide detail on how you mounted the angles for the side skirts, also, where did u get the angles?

[slownugly]

very cool build!! i like that the hatch is still operable. i have a focus too but thats not built for fuel economy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oaEDacAUro

[HydroJim]

Originally Posted by tru

please provide detail on how you mounted the angles for the side skirts, also, where did u get the angles?

The angle aluminum is 2" x 2" x 1/8". I bought it a long time ago from onlinemetals.com for another project and I simply cut my scraps up into 1"
wide strips and drilled a 3/8" hole in the end. I used the mounting hardware from the original side skirts to mount the angle to the car so that I would not have to drill any holes into the car. The mounting hardware consists of plastic anchors that snap into holes in the car which allow for a screw to be screwed into them. similar to dry wall anchors.

[HydroJim]

Originally Posted by slownugly

very cool build!! i like that the hatch is still operable. i have a focus too but thats not built for fuel economy

That car is so bad***. I would have liked to build up a car like that, but being in high school I could only afford to do one or the other so I went the fuel economy route because I find it more interesting to be unique. Plenty of kids have fast cars that their daddy paid for, but I'm pretty proud that I got to construct my "aerofocus" myself.

By the way, is that car street legal? my uncle has an impala that sounds pretty similar, and lets just say...it wouldn't pass any emissions tests